KOOLBOKS, a tech brand, has come to bridge the refrigeration gap in Nigeria with solar-powered refrigeration system; according to Ayoola Dominic, its co-founder.

Ayoola, in this chat, talks about the usefulness of the brand to the Nigerian family, small scale entrepreneurs SMEs, especially those into the frozen foods business and others. Excerpts:

How did you and your partner hit on the idea of Koolboks’ refrigeration business?
Today in Africa, we have three significant problems: One, 40% of food is wasted in emerging markets. Secondly, about five out of every ten patients die due to vaccine spoilage. Again, even when one can afford a refrigerator, which is usually expensive, there is the recurring problem of lack of electricity. Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa today lack access to electricity and therefore lack access to refrigeration. And when they even have refrigeration, the cost of effectively owning one is usually an uneasy task. Because after getting a refrigerator, they typically have to get a generator and then you start buying fuel to be able to run your refrigerator, which makes the whole thing problematic. Furthermore, is the environmental aspect. Most of the refrigerants that are being used are dangerous. They have been banned elsewhere and these are 80,000 times more dangerous than carbon, but that is what still exists in African countries.
So, what we have done is provide the solution using sun and water, which is very cheap. We make it a pay-as-go to make it easy for individuals and shop owners to pay on a monthly, weekly or daily basis. You can pay as low as N12,000 weekly or monthly. Our mission is to make cooling affordable and accessible to everyone that needs it and to stimulate small-scale businesses in Nigeria.

What are the other benefits of Koolboks refrigerators to Nigerians?
Koolboks freezers come with four LED bulbs and four charging points which means that whether or not you have a public power generator or not, Koolboks system is one that powers your house with light and you at the same time charge your phones. So it provides light, energy and refrigeration in a single unit. That also means providing your family all these from a natural energy source which is not diluted. It is like using the sun and water to power your home which you do not have to pay for. We give you the opportunity to pay for it every month for the next 24 months; so what else do you need? God has given you sun and you have water in the ground, which is natural. The value that comes with Koolboks is immeasurable for family and for small business owners, who can sell all manners of drinks without having to sweat to get a generator and all that. All we are doing is to empower struggling families and others.

While going through Koolboks brands, I read of something like monitoring the temperature of the refrigerator and it’s battery, tell us more about that.
For us, we are able to monitor the temperature, monitor the battery voltage on the refrigerators; why are we doing this? We figure out that most of our customers are small business owners who are into the frozen food business. In the frozen food business you have to preserve the integrity of your products. You know meats are meant to be kept at a particular temperature and the same thing goes for fishes and others. They shouldn’t go beyond that temperature for you to be able to sell your foods fresh and clean or you poison people generally, so the whole idea is for us to remotely monitor the temperature of the fridge. It’s just like someone or kidney that requires oxygen at a particular rate and you know what it means when he does not get it. Or what it means when a frozen food dealer or vaccine preserver goes off power for four or five hours? They become understandably worried because they could lose a lot in terms of spoilage. That is why we monitor the temperature of the refrigerators and also monitor the battery voltage. There is no issue of transport; just monitor it and make a phone call and you will be asked to do this or that and it will be fine. That is the main reason we make sure to monitor our freezers. We understand that our customers deal in perishables. One good thing is that this is easy and can be done on the palm of your hand, with your phone from anywhere in the world. It is possible to do this even in areas where there is no network.
Sometimes we know that vaccines are more expensive than the refrigerator itself. We have some of our refrigerators in remote areas; we have them over water in areas that are not accessible but we still monitor these. We can have this sometimes in areas where there is no network because it works with GSM networks.

How long can the Koolboks brand last?
It still has no energy storage. People should be aware that when there is no sun they should not unnecessarily throw open the doors; you should know that even when you open a fridge that is constantly on power, the ice de-freezes. When you talk about freezing and cooling, people should be able to define what they actually want. We need to clearly define this because we have different energy demands for different needs.

Can Koolboks be used with public power?
Yes it can work with or without public power; you have the ability to switch in-between both. Koolboks has the ability to switch between NEPA and Solar. But our campaign is ‘shame on NEPA’ because we have come to bridge the gap.

What is the market penetration target for Koolboks brand in Nigeria?
Our market projection in Nigeria this year is 7,000 units; next year we are looking at 15,000 units, which I think is even small, but we are planning gradual penetration of the market in Nigeria.

What other sectors of the economy is the Koolboks brand especially targeting?
Hospitals and labs alone can’t pay our bills alone because you ask yourself: how many hospitals and labs do we have? The Koolboks brand is for every home; for domestic use; and particularly those small business owners that require constant energy for their products and services. If the frozen food business owners are not careful, they can throw away their goods because of lack of power and that is the major problem we want to solve; these are the ones we majorly target. Why go for electricity when the sun is free?

Forecast into the future and how is your market penetration of other African countries?
We are currently in eighteen countries and out of these countries, sixteen of them are in Africa. We are targeting offices in Mozambique and Congo in the next two years. We are building our assembly plant in Nigeria already and it is very big. We started building from scratch.